Royaltie Review: Overpriced Bluetooth spam devices?

Royaltie provide no information on their website about who owns or runs the business.

A footer on the Royaltie website identifies its parent company as Hiram Lodge Enterprises Corp.

The Royaltie affiliate agreement suggests Royaltie and Hiram Lodge Enterprises Corp are based out of Ontario, Canada:

This Agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the Province of Ontario and shall be treated in all respects as an Ontario contract.

Each of the parties irrevocably attorns to the jurisdiction of the courts of the Province of Ontario.

Further research reveals marketing videos on Royaltie’s official YouTube channel identifying Justin Belobaba as founder and CEO of the company.

As per a press-release announcing Royaltie’s initial launch in July 2016, Belobaba is cited as

a serial entrepreneur in health, finance and technology. His past ventures include wireless payment software for North American taxicabs, and a publicly-traded provider of electronic medical record software for physicians.

In 2010, he was named “Young Entrepreneur of the Year” by Profit Magazine.

As far as I can tell, Royaltie is Belobaba’s first MLM venture.

Worth noting is Royaltie first launched with a “mobile app rewards program”.

The Royaltie program, which provides its users 10% rewards on all their health, fitness and beauty purchases, breaks the mold of traditional rewards programs by being the first to offer a customer-centric, rather than a business-centric, approach to earning rewards.

This appears to have been scrapped and replaced with the current “gem” product in early 2017.

Royaltie also has an “exclusive network marketing contract” with Asirvia.

Not withstanding, even if I had Bluetooth turned on, getting bombarded with unsolicited advertising messages would certainly prompt me to turn it off quick smart.

That said, it’s worth noting that Royaltie’s gem messages appear as notifications and disappears if the receiving device goes out of range of the broadcasting gem.

Depending on how your phone is set up however, Bluetooth notifications could still set your phone off – which is annoying, even if the notification disappears once you go out of range.

With a 100 meter range per device, I’m also not sure why someone (the product seems targeted to business owners) would need more than one device.

Unless the customer had multiple businesses, why would they need to broadcast spam over multiple 100 meter coverage areas?

As to the cost of the gem devices, current pricing on the Royaltie website is three gem devices for $29 a month. Additional gem devices are available for $8 a month each.

As of June 1st, this pricing is being scrapped in favor of pricing quoted in this review. With the cost of three gem devices increasing to $49, that’s a 59% markup.

As far as I can tell, there’s no modification or upgrades to the device being made to Royaltie’s gem devices to justify the price increase. If anything, isn’t the price of existing tech supposed to come down over time?

The only stated reason for Royaltie’s gem price hike I was able to find was a marketing video published on Asirvia’s Facebook page.

In the video, Justin Belobaba explains;

The pricing that Asirvia has gone to market with, my company Royaltie, which is the manufacturer, we will be bringing our prices into line with those in the next few days.

So uh prior to June 1st I can get gems from Royaltie 41% cheaper, but then after June 1st I’m going to pay 59% more… because that’s what Asirvia want to charge?

With Asirvia being an MLM company, I’m assuming the price increase is mostly attributable to funding affiliate commissions.

Paying 60% more for the same product just to fund affiliate commissions is pretty consumer unfriendly.

That and with the same pricing, how are there going to be two MLM companies marketing the same product service?

On paper this equates to Asirvia affiliates competing directly against the gem device manufacturer. Who, as evidenced by Royaltie’s pre-June pricing are able to sell the devices 41% cheaper, but choose not to do so to level the playing field.

I was also initially at a loss as to why the gem products are sold via monthly subscription.

As per the Royaltie website, the gem product

does not require cellular data or a Wifi connection. Just take it out of the box, and you’re up and running!

This raises the question of how messages are updated on the gem devices.

I originally thought you’d just connect to the device via an app or some such, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.

In one Royaltie affiliate marketing presentation, it’s stated changing the message can take up to 24 hours to update on the gem device.

Another reveals messages are updated by logging into the Royaltie website, which suggests Royaltie themselves send out the messages as opposed to the gem device.

Without getting too technical, it seems the Bluetooth device simply checks if Bluetooth is enabled on a device. This triggers something through the Android OS and delivers the message over WIFI from Royaltie’s website (live internet connection needed on the receiving Android device).

If the message is contained within the gem device, if a user stops paying the monthly fee they’ll still work. Obviously the message being broadcast can’t be changed though without an active Royaltie subscription.

Apparently the tech behind such devices is “Eddystone”, an open-source Android protocol for Bluetooth communication. Apple’s equivalent is iBeacon, which requires an app installation to work in the same way (and is not supported by Royaltie’s gem devices).

The specific communication tech behind the devices is Bluetooth Smart (also known as Bluetooth Low Energy).

With a bit more digging around, I found Kontact beacons, who appear to be the actual manufacturer of Royaltie’s product.

Three “double battery” beacons will set you back $60, so in that sense $49 doesn’t sound too bad – however bear in mind $49 a month quickly adds up (bulk orders of Kontakt beacons attract a discount, although how much isn’t disclosed).

Kontakt provide a web interface to manage the beacon, which is presumably what Royaltie have plugged into. Kontakt also offer a free mobile app ‘find, connect to, monitor, manage, and update any Kontakt.io proximity device‘. How that compares to Royaltie’s web-interface with a monthly subscription I can’t say.

Whether the monthly subscription cost is worth it to a customer is subjective, but either way you’re locked into a minimum two month subscription to test it out.

I’d wager the Royaltie/Kontakt back-end interface is much more convenient to use over any Alibaba sourced device.

This works provided the majority of Royaltie subscription holders are retail customers.

With there being no fee attached to Royaltie affiliate membership, it’s possible the income opportunity will wind up being marketed over the gem product (retail).

This will manifest itself by affiliates paying for three gems, recruiting others who do the same till they hit the I3 rank (which eliminates the monthly subscription cost), and continuing to recruit to earn more each month.

If one of our affiliates or customers earns free Gems, you will still be credited for the revenue as if they were still paying their monthly subscription.

The good news is this is easy to evaluate. Just ask your potential upline how many retail (non-affiliate) customers they’ve got paying a monthly subscription and compare that to recruited affiliates.

This will also give you an idea of retail customer retention (whether the gem subscriptions are worth it without the attached income opportunity).

Apart from being massively annoying if abused (a lot of people carrying these devices around and broadcasting whatever in crowded spaces = spam nightmare), the gems do appear to have retail viability for store owners.

A hair salon for example could benefit from broadcasting a special to attract walk-ins, and I’m sure you can come up with a few examples of your own.

The question is whether that’s worth a minimum $25 a month to business owners.

One final thought to consider is this isn’t really a product that’s going to work over the internet. If you intend to pitch to retail customers, you’re going to have to get out there and market the gems to actual people/businesses.

And given subscription volume is only counted down two levels of recruitment, forget about relying on thousands of people under you generating monthly rank volume (unless you manage recruit thousands of affiliates within two levels, which is extremely unlikely).

Passive marketing is possible through the Royaltie gem devices, but then you fall into the trap of the gems being used to pitch Royaltie itself.

THANK YOU FOR PUTTING UP TH HOW TO DISABLE notifications. I have a Samsung S7 and I just checked and I was glad the default was already set to off.

I do have my Bluetooth is always on because I’m in sales and wear a wireless headset. I Have NEVER had any spam like this on my phone even when i do walk into businesses that were mentioned. I have been at Disneyland and Starbucks and no issues either.

NOTE: I am going to be tell my friends about this and leave the choice up to them if they want to disable this or leave it. ✌️

Hi guys, I love reading your reviews but with this one I’m disappointed with the lack of research into exactly how this technology works Oz.

K Chang the link you put in your comment I copy and pasted (did not work) so I did a search and do not see anything relevant to what you is being discussed here at all. Please reference the section and repost a valid link as I always want to learn and research.

As for these companies I do not see either one being around for long at all. Personal opinion this is not something for the MLM people (I was in the industry for 12 years so I’m not bashing the industry).

This is just not meant for them. To me that is spammy because 99% of people in the industry do not know how to market.

For myself, I own my own organic skincare business (not MLM) and I see a huge benefit in this technology for myself and other small business owners.

We cannot compete with the big chain stores in advertising spending. Each month I have spent a tremendous amount. Most others have as well with very little if any, return on investment.

With this technology, as small business owners, we can spend a tenth of what we do in other venues and reach a tremendous amount more people who are in our area.

I have a friend who owns a salon who uses it and has increased the business to her salon by 25% using a simple message that says her salon name, phone and walkins welcome. For a small business owner that is HUGE!

If I am not in range of it AND I do not open my home screen I will not see the notification for her salon. So it is not intrusive.

I don’t want intrusive either.

The people who have seen her message and come in her salon have commented about it saying how cool it was too. Some won’t think so but others will. It is preference for sure.

I know when I go to Sears or Home Depot in my area I get the same thing and it doesn’t bother me because it’s up to me to ignore it or click on it.

Again, as I said, this is not something for MLM and I hate seeing it taken in this direction.

And it is against googles terms and conditions to use their platform in that way so I’m quite sure these companies will not be around for long.

With this technology, as small business owners, we can spend a tenth of what we do in other venues and reach a tremendous amount more people who are in our area.

Have you done a survey of people you know that actually have Bluetooth enabled?

If you can set it up without the ongoing monthly cost it might be cost-effective but otherwise seems like a lot of money to spend to reach not that many people. Unless you’re in a particular location where people are checking notifications (bus/train stop for example).

I have been in graphics & marketing for over 30 years, this beacon notification is a reasonable advancement in technology to help the little guy for a change. i love the idea of a level playing field.

i do not agree that it is spam since it is permission based, you click yes or no. Secondly there are many reasons having more than 1 unit. Keep one at your business and the other on your keychain to Brand your company wherever you go.

Now if you owned a Real Estate office, every agent should have one to market your agency and you can put a code in the notification to identify the agent that created the lead for proper distribution. You can also keep one at your listings with a link to a virtual tour.

Service people will market to the neighbors without running around putting their flyers on all the doors on the block

I was in a best buy 2 weeks ago and just before i was going to check out i got a notification with a 10% off coupon (boom $40 bucks saved) would you mind that.

There are many reasons for embracing this technology it’s just a matter if you want to leverage it or not, it’s a choice.

I bet many of you nay sayers go to networking events to meet potential clients face to face and at the end of the day you shook hands with 8-10 people (out of 60-=80 there) to maybe find one good client.

So try this, get a broadcaster that reaches 50% of the room and have it link to your website with your picture, I bet more people will find you out of curiosity how did you do that… now you shake hands with 25 or more prospects. which is better for you? be the popular person in the room or not.

But the short of it is the phone needs to be in “discoverable mode” for BT spam to work. And most people only turn on discoverable mode when they are actually in BT settings page. Merely having BT on does NOT allow the phone to receive BT spam.

Do you know any one who stays in BT settings page all the time? Nope. Thus, these devices are worthless as advertising devices.

Kasey, that seemed a little rude and unnecessary. I was NOT being rude in any way but rather hoping you may have another link or attached the wrong one.

In regards to the new link you posted I appreciate that because I love researching anything new! So thank you.

As far as no one having Bluetooth on all the time, that is a pretty blanket statement. In my house 2 of 3 of our Bluetooth are on ALL the time. And yes I do know many who do, MOST do not though.

We just know different people and that’s ok 🙂

What are your thoughts on big box retailers using this technology for the last 7 years? I doubt they would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a technology that does not work or that is not legal.

BUT…
I do want to clarify something in regard to this entire article and I hope we can agree on this aspect. Both Royaltie AND Asirvia will be shut down by google because of their MISUSE (which I would agree is SPAM).

These two companies are using it 100% WRONG! Myself and several small business owners who have brick and mortar stores will be following in the footsteps of the big box stores though and offering coupons and the like.

I have sure idea your line of work or business so it may be something that is not relevant to you. But us little guys in small towns across America who are just trying to grow our dream of owning a small boutique, salon or mom and pop restaurant it is of value.

If someone were to do their homework (like I have) they would know they could purchase them straight from the manufacturer as I have.

Royaltie is NOT the manufacturer either. They purchase from 2 separate companies and program them.

Asirvia is an affiliate of Royaltie because the manufacturers they reached out too would not sell to them directly since they are quite clearly an MLM. They went around the backside through Royaltie to pull it off.

I read the article and thank you so much! I have bookmarked it because although it was from 2015, it is helping me to understand the way the technology works in different ways.

The conclusion struck me and I am curious if you read the whole article or just the first paragraph?

CONCLUSION

Bluejacking (which by the way is the name the creator – a Malaysian IT consultant gave it) technique can be used to interact with new people and has ability to revolunerise market by sending advertisement about the product, enterprise etc. on the Bluetooth configured mobile phone so that the people get aware about them by seeing them on the phone.

This technique is used in many fields like cinema, train station, shopping malls, mobile phone shops etc. now a days there are new tools available in the markets by which bluejacking can be done.

So this technology can become the key for advertising and to interact with world and to get the location messages on the phone when a person is somewhere out. There are few security issue which can be minimized by taking some simple precautions.

I love your reviews!!! I have directed several people to it over the years as a starting point to their research and always encourage them to use it at a starting point.

As far as google goes, in order to insert a message it has to be done through googles beacon tools dashboard. With just a URL the dashboard is not required but with the way these two companies are doing things the dashboard is necessary.

Given that it clearly states in googles terms that you are NOT to use the beacon platform for ANY affiliate or MLM BOTH companies are in violation.

As far as Royaltie being an MLM I do not agree because if that were the case Amazon, Paypal, Hostgator hell most companies out there today would be considered MLM.

Royaltie is an affiliate company just as the ones I just mentioned but personally I think it’s irrelevant what either of them are due to the fact they are using Google in violation of its terms.

Google does not charge a monthly fee, no, their tool is free. These two companies charge a monthly fee for changing the messages and “leasing” the product to customers.

Customers are able to change their message yes, but that’s only in appearance if you will. Royaltie employees are the ones actually going into Google to make the change. Google is connected to Royalties API making them the only ones who can change the messages.

It reminds me of my outrageous cellphone bill or Directtv lol. I buy the phone or the box and every month they charge me a fee to use the service. That is what these guys are doing.

Royaltie has a two level compensation plan which “legally” according to the two MLM attorneys I spoke too makes it an Affiliate program. An affiliate program can be one or two tier. Once you add that third level you are considered by law as an MLM.

I know there is a lot of confusion and so many differing opinions out there as to what constitutes an affiliate or an MLM so I made calls to lawyers in the industry to find out. This is what I was told in both calls and it makes sense to me.

I don’t know much about the technology or the legality, but as for the amount of people that have bluetooth enabled on their phones, I’ve found it to be quite a lot.

The most popular earbuds/headphones are all bluetooth now. Also, smartwatches(I have one and most people I know do as well) are connected via bluetooth. People also connect to the ‘info-tainment’ systems in most modern cars via bluetooth.

I feel as though these numbers may go down considerably as you go up in age groups, but these are just my findings 😉

Google is already using the technology. For example! Use Google Calendar of Google Maps. When you are in proximity of that location Google will ping your phone with a notification to rate the business. Royaltie Gem does the same thing.

Now small business owners who don’t have a advertising budget can offer local foot traffic their special offers for $25 a month.

If they refer others and create $100 in sales the fee for their first 3 Royaltie Gem’s ($49) is waved. FREE ADVERTISING! The American Dream in Advertising.

Oz, sorry, but you are not up to date with laws regarding MLM. There are definitely two level affiliate programs, that are NOT MLM.

I know, I have one for products on one of my websites, and my lawyers made it very clear: “The people who call two level affiliate programs MLM, have no clue what they are talking about.” (Not my statement).

This makes both Royaltie and Asirvia, 100% legal.

Whoever mentioned that someone needs to have their bluetooth settings page open, to receive notifications, did get a WTH kind of giggle out of me, as that isn’t even remotely close to accurate. In fact, cannot begin to figure out where the hell they got that little bit of misinformation. (The media???)

The is a big difference between bluetooth, and BLE, which is blue tooth low energy, such as the transmission difference. With BLE, the range can be over 2 miles. (if you think you can’t reach a lot of people with a NON-SPAM message transmitted to the ‘enabled’ people, within a 4 mile diameter circle, you smoke to much pot)

These notifications are SOFT notifications, which DO NOT make noise, vibrate, popup over other pages/screens, etc. They are ONLY visible when people intentionally check their notifications, or if they open up the “Nearby” page, in their Google settings. (I purposely have a button, on my phone, to check nearby alerts, for discounts. MANY others would too, if they knew about it).

If people think others don’t check their notification, they must be using analog phones, still, or they are pot smokers. lol

You can’t promise that. You have NO IDEA what sort of way the recipient device will react to sensing a BLE beacon.

A BLE beacon is device agnostic and a blind broadcaster. The fact that you can sprout that sort of promise means YOU are the one who has no idea what your beacon actually does.

All BLE Beacon does is periodically announce “hey, I am XYZ and I’m here!”

How BLE enabled devices react to sensing that beacon is up to the device, and usually, to a specific app. Facebook app, for example, will react to Facebook beacons and display local merchants on Facebook. But if you don’t have Facebook app loaded, it won’t do anything.

Whoever’s selling you those devices probably forgot to mention the part where the user needs to download apps to make those notifications appear. Tsk tsk tsk.

Also, just as FYI for those who prefer to read actualy technical info rather than advertising copies, here’s a good primer to read on BLE beacons

pointrlabs.com/posts/beacons-everything-you-need-to-know/

Sample content:

iBeacon lets iPhones/iPads/iPods constantly scan for nearby Bluetooth devices. When it identifies a device, like a beacon, it can wake up an app on the phone.

i.e. no app, no wake, no notification!

Yes all modern phones can support BLE but you have to turn on Bluetooth for anything to happen.

Bluetooth off and nothing will happen.

On Android devices there is no operating-system management of beacons and the apps must scan for BLE devices themselves. This means the apps must be running (can be in the background) all the time and hence use up more battery (not very much).

i.e. no app, no scanning for BLE beacons, nothing will happen, on Android (and iOS, as explained previously)

All in all, these beacons are ONLY useful for those already with the proper app with the matching beacon ID. Nobody will be scanning for random beacons as they walk down the street.

Here’s iConnect, that SELLS to businesses the services of these beacons, in their FAQ:

Q: Do I need to have an app to receive notifications?

A: Yes, Customers must have installed an app in order to receive notifications on their phone.

Q: I do not have an app. What should I do?

A: Don’t worry. Our developers can help you create a mobile app.

Q: Can I use my own beacons?

A: Yes, but we recommend Estimote Beacons

Q: Do beacons send in-store offers based on the customer locations or apps do?

A: Beacons do not send notifications to a user’s phone; apps do. Beacons simply send small bits of data, typically a unique identifier to an app (e.g. in-store location) to tell the app the customer entered into vicinity of the beacons. That signal triggers an app to perform an action.

softwebsmartretail.com/faqs.html

No app, no notification, soft or otherwise. Estimote, like Kontakt.io are the early pioneers in the field.

You can BUY 5 beacons for $110 (outright) and pay $50 a month to manage all five at Beaconstream.com

Or you can pay Royaltie 50 a month to “rent” 3 beacons.

Since BeaconStream also offers whitelabeling services, there really is no telling where RoyalTie got their stuff from, is there? It’s really just a markup service reselling someone else’s stuff in order to afford the MLM margin.

If you have to pay the $50 per month to use the service anyway, and you get the devices included in the deal, wouldn’t that make the deal better? I compared the offers between ibeacon, Royaltie, and Asirvia.

ibeacon has the best offer on multiple devices and services, but they nickle and dime you to death on how to use the service.

Asirvia and Royaltie charges about the same for their product and service, but Asirvia charges you a fee to be an affiliate and Royaltie doesn’t.

I do like the idea that Royaltie will let you be an affiliate for no charge when buying their product while Asirvia will charge you $25/month whether you buy their product or not which states this on THEIR OWN WEBSITE AND MARKETING PLAN.

This is based on my interpretation on all three of these websites taking advantage of bluetooth smart beacon technology

Depends on how deep you want to go and how much tracking you want, I guess. Personally, I’m a techie, and I don’t need specific campaign tracking, so I’d probably roll my own by order beacons directly from China, but that’s just me.

But I think my point is most people who are hot about RoyalTie have NO IDEA what they’re talking about.

You need an app to scan the beacons, and these guys sound as if your beacon will broadcast its message to any phone that comes into range. It doesn’t work that way.

Tony Genova: They work just fine and I did not download any special App.

That’d be a miracle because Android has NO software built into the system to read beacons, unlike iOS. There is also no link between bluetooth and Android notification, as Bluetooth existed long before Android.

So you pretty much have to be holding the phone to your face to see the silent notification that disappears automatically when you walk out of range.

Okay, I’ll grant you I was mistaken on that. This is much like walking past a starbucks and the phone asks you if you want to log into the free wifi. (Except this time, it’s showing a link to the website or app of the store)

I’m not saying I like or hate the tech, as I can see it’d be useful in SOME circumstances. I merely don’t see why does one need to pay $25 a month for ONE beacon that can be purchased from China for $15 and programmed in a few minutes to broadcast a link to the store’s website.

Who knows exactly where the monthly payments are being applied toward, but seeing that RoyalTie/Asirvia is working/partnering with Google to use their Nearby app to allow beacons to “broadcast” a user’s message to any BLUETOOTH/NEARBTY activated Android phone, how would I program a beacon from China to work with Google’s Nearby tech.

It would be great if Google allowed individuals to use Nearby to SEND out messages!! As for businesses go, I understand that Asirvia has exclusive rights to use Google’s Nearby app. for beacon purposes.

Can it be considered SPAM? possibly Google limits the amount of times a nearby message can be sent to a user that does not open the link…

For small businesses it is a game changer. Believe it or not, people have bluetooth on quite a bit…especially if they have an phone earbud. I agree – Not everyone has it on… but then again, not everyone is a potential customer either.

It only has a 100 yd range without obstructions really, so it is only effective If I am by a small business… and it is broadcasting a special or a sale.

I would LOVE the notification if I planned to go there anyway or could save me money in what I was already looking to spend.

As far as the 25 a month for what?? Its not for the Beacon its For the app that allows you to change and schedule your messages. I looked into the app, and it has a scheduling function. Think Hootsuite Post scheduling… very similar concept.

Anyway, If you think the tech is intrusive or spam turn it off. If you don’t see value in a $25 mo. Then ask yourself what your time is worth?

You need to start thinking of what your time is worth… if it’s not worth $25 a month, then its not.

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